Technology and passion in the service of learning

In earlier posts, I referred to MIT's opencourseware project, and to the president of Blackboard remarking that online learning is not simply about putting a course online. So, it was neat to read in today's Chronicle a commentary that brings these two ideas together. I tell you, it feels great to know that I am not an idiot after all when I wrote those things :-)

Anyway, enough about me, eh! The author writes:

That culture of sharing and participation usually starts with the students themselves, as we see vividly in the complex, multiplayer game worlds and in the power of study groups, whether conducted face-to-face or virtually. Such a culture must also involve content. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology was a pioneer when it developed its OpenCourseWare project. Other universities quickly followed MIT's lead, and both the content and the means of accessing class materials and remixing and repurposing them for different audiences grew.
But it's time that we in higher education move beyond considering only content. We must begin to determine how that content can encompass multiple kinds of instructional or learning activities. It is, after all, the combination of things we do with content that creates learning platforms.

As I was reading it, my thought was that today's professors are like the DJs of today's music. DJs are totally unlike the old time disk-jockeys. The current ones mix music, sample them, every once in a while create their own music, and the best of them pretty much set the trends.
The fantastic aspect of Web2.0 is that I am able to sample content and ideas that I could never before, and am able to remix them to create my own music in the classroom. (Well, maybe my students think it is all cacophony!)

Anyway, the author (who is at USC, my PhD school!) then says:

We must think about how technology, content, and knowledge of learning and teaching can be creatively combined to enhance education and ignite students' passion, imagination, and desire to constantly learn about — and make sense of — the world around them. And we need to collect and share good models in which various professors' and students' experiences are commented on and tried out in new contexts. ....
.... Today the Web offers students incredible opportunities to find and join niche communities that ignite their passions. That sets the stage, through productive inquiry and peer-based learning, for such students to acquire both the practice of and knowledge about a field.
In the end, the millions of niche amateur communities — from the Latin word amator, meaning lover of — could provide a powerful learningscape for lifelong learning that is grounded in the learning practices that students acquire on campuses. That would be a major step toward creating a culture of learning for the 21st century.

Hey, maybe online teaching and learning will even revive the learning of Greek and Sanskrit? We currently can't offer them at most universities because if is simply not cost-effective to offer this for a couple of students. This is what happened at USC, when it shut down German. Online? Endless possibilities :-)